In the aftermath of Donald Trump's electoral college victory,?????? ???????? many on the left and around the world are looking for someone to blame, but it might have been the messaging.
Fingers have pointed in many directions. Some have blamed the Democratic National Committee for conspiring to side with Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. Some have blamed women voters for not turning out in larger numbers. Some have blamed the media for giving Trump free coverage.
However, the fault may lie with Clinton's inability to convince key voters in those valuable swing states that she understood their economic anxieties and that she would have their backs if they elected her commander-in-chief.
You May Also Like
SEE ALSO: Bernie Sanders is prepared to be Trump's 'worst nightmare'
Since much of the polling data has come in, a lot of speculation has arisen around the slim margin with which Trump won the pivotal swing states. As of the current tally, Clinton has won over 500,000 more votes than Trump, but, in the states that really matter, he came away the slight victor.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
For many of the most important states, the margins were extremely tiny. In Florida, Trump won by less than 150,000 votes, In Pennsylvania, he won by less than 70,000 votes. And in Michigan, he won by less than 15,000 votes.
Economic Anxiety
Trump's promise to "Make America Great Again" swept through the so-called "Rust Belt," where manufacturing jobs have steadily declined over the past several decades, a result of increasing globalization.
That reason seems fairly obvious to many people in those states. Since 2000, 5 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared from America. Though the recent economic recovery has brought more jobs and created a more stable market economy, many new opportunities for employment are quite different from the manufacturing jobs that fueled local economies as recently as 20 years ago.
Clinton did apparently little to comfort the nervousness of an economically changing landscape.
To be sure, CNN exit polls show that 52 percent of voters who made under $50,000 a year voted for Clinton. However, more people in that same income bracket voted for Trump than voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. A full 3 percent more people turned out in favor of Trump's vow to end the migration of manufacturing jobs, brought about by, as he saw it, unfair free trade deals. Trump also earned 41 percent of voters who made less than $30,000, whereas only 35 percent of voters in that economic range voted for Romney.
While this isn't an enormous groundswell of low income voters, those percentage points going to Clinton would have made all the difference.
Lack of a Clinton message
As she campaigned around the country, Clinton apparently did little to comfort people nervous about the changing economic landscape. Her experience serving as a senator and a Secretary of State did little to convince the public that she could handle the economy. A telling poll from late summer showed that 48 percent of respondents thought that Trump would do a better job improving the economy, where only 43 percent of respondents thought that of Clinton.
It's not that she never addressed the economy; quite the opposite. She prided herself on how she "sweat the details on policy" and provided an intricate plan for economic growth. As Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers who advised Clinton, told The Washington Post, “The risk in the campaign is, it doesn’t fit easily on a bumper sticker.”
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Clinton largely campaigned on the strength of Obama's high approval rating, which currently sits at 53 percent. Possibly not wanting to step on the toes of a popular outgoing president, Clinton might have been hesitant to appease the shrinking manufacturing sector with the dour, near apocalyptic tone that Trump took when describing the current state of the American economy.
Clinton did provide a lengthy strategy on how to "Make it in America," which broke down her plan to encourage revitalization in manufacturing. It included a promise to invest $10 billion in the sector and swore to scrutinize trade deals to ensure that they didn't harm jobs. It has loads of information on proposed tax credits, possible incentives and global trade rules. It was a detailed plan and she brought the specifics to her stump speech.
Trump, who has a plan to create 25 million jobs in the next 10 years, mostly campaigned on bringing jobs back from overseas and reestablishing the manufacturing economy of the mid-20th century.
This nostalgic message clearly convinced enough people to secure him the presidency. However, many have written about the improbability of being able to turn back time to the days when America led the world in manufacturing.
The rise in automation, the need for skilled labor and the continuing increase in manufacturing output are just a few of the reasons cited that would keep jobs from returning.
Still, it was a message that worked. It was simple and it resonated with voter concerns.
By the end of the campaign, Clinton, along with the Obamas, was largely campaigning simply against Trump as a candidate and not forwarding a cohesive, straightforward message about what mattered most to swing state voters.
Mere days before the election, reporters at CNN discussed the complicated and unclear economic message that Clinton used to woo voters.
"If you ask someone to describe in 30 seconds what Hillary Clinton's views on the economy is, she still hasn't gotten there," Chief National Correspondent John King said.
Clinton's biggest slogan, "Stronger Together," perhaps did not contain the same optimism of Obama's "Hope" in 2008, and her's was largely a response to the divisive politics of Trump. But voters who didn't have a problem with Trump's message needed something more attuned to their specific economic worries.
And, in that vein, Clinton failed.
Crucial turnout
Even if Clinton would have spoken to these economic anxieties and provided an economic plan swing state voters could trust for their future, it is difficult to say whether she could have demonstrably swayed any Trump voters to turn out for her. After all, many voted for Trump based purely on the fact that he was nota career politician.
However, it is possible to see how the right message would have energized former Democratic voters in swing states to show up on Nov. 8.
This election had the lowest turnout rate in 20 years and that made all the difference.
Trump received 2 percent less of the Republican vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012. But, Clinton received 14 percent less of the Democratic vote than Obama did in that same year and 17 percent less than he received in 2008. While Romney earned 500,000 more votes than Trump, Obama earned almost four million more votes than Clinton.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This staggering fact underlines the perceived lack of enthusiasm with which Clinton's campaign entered Election Day. If she could have convinced less than a million more eligible voters -- people who had formerly voted Democratic -- to turn out to the polls for her, she would have won the election.